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Visit by Iran’s leader sparked terminal rift with army

A soldier warns protesters away from a military building (Spencer Platt)

When the knock on the door came just before 5pm last Wednesday, President
Mohamed Morsi was dumbfounded.

Three senior officers marched into his office, where he was holding a crisis
meeting with aides and Muslim Brotherhood officials over the anti-government
demonstrations that were paralysing the country. They formally told him he
had been stripped of his presidency.

Morsi, dressed in a white shirt, burst into uncontrollable, almost hysterical
laughter.

“It’s unacceptable what’s going on. This is a coup,” he yelled, according to
reports in the Saudi press. Egypt’s first democratically elected leader had
served just 368 days. Pakinam al-Sharkawi, one of Morsi’s few female
advisers, was the first to realise that her boss was doomed. She began
screaming at the officers, shouting: “What you are doing is illegal!”

For months Morsi, 61, had been heading for a showdown with General Abdul
Fattah al-Sisi, 58, the army commander and minister of defence.